Reviews (11)

I actually really enjoyed this course, and I haven't taken any other subject where I actually remember what has been taught to me. I use all of the material on a daily basis with conversations and public speaking, and I find it incredibly useful. When I read the reviews for this course, I understood completely where everyone is coming from as you really have to be very passionate about the details of how we communicate in order to enjoy this course. I would recommend that you take this subject as one of your first courses, because then you'll know whether you're going to enjoy communications or journalism right away.

I found the lectures very interesting because the lecturer included stories from her life and where she applied the course matter. A personal touch on the content makes for a better learning experience, in my opinion. It's just really great to see a lecturer who is genuinely in love with what she's teaching, and I appreciate that from an educator. The tutor I had was lovely and very experienced in the field, which also allowed for some personal stories detailing where she used the skills we learnt in that course.

But as I mentioned before, you really have to love analysing communication in order to love this course.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2014

Your program/major

Communications and Journalism

Is lecture attendance necessary?

I would recommend that you go to add more insight into the application of the skills you are learning.

Lectures were just pointless movie clips and the lecturers life story. Tutes were the most painful hour of the week because absolutely no one wanted to be there, they just wanted the 1% for every time they showed up with homework (seriously? We're all adults here) and studying for it was the most boring and painful experience of my life. Essay was a ridiculous 'over analyse a politicians body language' nonsense with completely random marking.

There was nothing interesting about this and now I've changed my major, I sorely regret that I've 'wasted' an elective on this.

PS: Driest readings ever too.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BArts

Is lecture attendance necessary?

Even if she doesn\\\'t record to be petty, all she is doing is discussing her life story anyway so nah.

This subject is the entire reason I changed my degree from Journalism (BComm) to Marketing (BBus).

Horrible, painful, dry Communication theory that will never be used anywhere again.

The assignment was little more than a cryptic crossword that expected you to be able to read a politicians mind and comment on why they spoke a certain way or why they scratched their nose. Tutors wouldn't provide any meaningful guidance to make sure you were writing the correct thing (I got a 5 by the skin of my teeth for this essay and a 7 for the major assignments in all 3 of my other subjects, says something about the subject and not me). Even the tutors didn't seem to care for the subject, my tutor opening admitted it was boring and dry every week and apologised.

As others have noted, the lecturer gets petty and stops recording if attendance drops. It's no surprise attendance drops since all she does in lectures is talk about herself and her life. I learned more from my tutor basically giving us the answers to worksheet every week and then I passed by just memorising the worksheets and spiting it back out on the exam.

To her credit, slides go up on blackboard quickly.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BBus/BA

Is lecture attendance necessary?

not really - even if she stops recording you\'re not missing much but her life story...

Ehhhhhh......the lecturer is a nice person (she was very nice to me when I had to see her for an extension because of a family crisis) but I agree that the endless personal anecdotes in lecturers were really irritating, especially when she stopped recording them so you had to go to the lectures and couldn't skip the stories. They didn't help much and got annoying after a while.

The course is also very dry and boring and like a previous commenter said, even the tutors didn't want to be at the tutes. It was a painful hour.

I also agree with comments the assignment requirements were very vague and the tutors refused to help clarify what they wanted from you so you just had to write something and hope for the best which was very annoying.

The readings were awful. Thankfully you can pass the exam without doing them.

Personally, I didn't have a problem with the lecturer. Her anecdotal stories made the content all the more memorable. She was there for me when I was having a mini-breakdown about my first major university assignment. Don't laugh - I can feel your judgement through the internet.

For both major assessments (a report and an exam), what is expected is not entirely clear due to the fact the course is a hellish melting pot of sociology, PR, linguistics and ancient philosophy. That being said, I found most of the content enjoyable - probably because I'm one of those weirdos who love acquiring knowledge, however trivial it may seem (hello arts degree!). It was frustrating to not be able to delve deeply into each area; I could have learnt more from a Wikipedia entry than I did from the entire course.*

Overall, 5/10 experience.

*The bit about learning more from a Wikipedia entry is true - it's how I studied for the exam. She stopped recording lectures and the slides weren't detailed enough.

I couldn't help but start humming 'Happy' as soon as I was out of the room finishing the exam for this course a couple of days ago because I was finally done with it.

There is NOTHING to like about this course and I hate that it is compulsory for my degree.

The content is dry and boring.

The lecturer is clearly a self obsessed woman because she spent more time talking about herself or showing clips from TV shows or movies she liked than the theories we needed to know. I gave up doing any of the readings because they didn't explain anything useful and the course was structured weirdly in a way that made absolutely no sense. She also refused to record lectures due to attendance issues.....probably because the lectures were useless so people stopped going because why sit there and listen to the 15 minute story of her life when you could listen to the important bits in 10 minutes.

The 'homework' assigned for a 1% was an annoying way to force people to go to the tutes which were painfully boring because all we did was overanalyse people's body language from Q&A episodes (and my tutor had the annoying habit of randomly assigning us into groups like primary schoolers so we had to move as soon as we sat down).

No marking criteria was given for the assignment which made it tricky to know exactly where to focus since it was such a subjective assignment in many ways. I only got a 24/40 for it, but I got a 7 on each of the other 3 reports/essays I wrote this semester so I know my writing and research skills are not the problem here. The problem was the complete lack of direction or criteria given.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2015

Your program/major

BJ/BA

Is lecture attendance necessary?

She likes to stop the recordings...not that you\\\'re missing anything!

This is a pretty terrible course! It's a bit of linguistics, common knowledge and social psychology with a bit of PR thrown in haphazardly. Apparently this was the first semester (Sem 1, 2015) to go without a textbook and everything suffered as a result. The content was not organised logically AT ALL, the readings were only mildly relevant and were meant to provide examples of the theory being discussed but they only really serve to confuse you (no concrete definitions are given for key terms throughout the course).

The lecturer is painfully obnoxious and seems to be of the opinion that nothing really needs to be explained thoroughly - especially if she can get you out of the lecture early. I would rather be in lecture for a full hour and walk out with a thorough grasp of what we're expected to know than 40mins of anecdotes and name dropping. A lot of the knowledge you're meant to acquire is implied in her ramblings, rather than stated explicitly - either verbally or on the slides. In this way, attending lectures is paramount because there is no other source for the content.

The assignment was a bit shit. Marking criteria were not provided so you had no idea what they were looking for. It was to be written in report format- which is extremely confusing to apply to a linguistics course- and tutorials were the most painful hour of the week. So unhelpful.

If you want to question your entire decision to go to University, become a PR student because then you will also be forced to do this absolutely nonsensical course. Full of heavy theories and hard to remember names for things that are simple common sense and history that will never be needed by PR students in a professional setting. And don't get me started on the assignment that basically expects you to read people's minds to know what they are thinking when presenting themselves in public and then apply some stupid theory to social media even though the theory was written 50+ years ago and is out of date in a modern context. Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Also has one of the most obnoxious lecturers I've ever come across....more interested in making everyone listen to her life story than the things needed for the exam and then wondered why attendance sharply declined and then she got all petty and stopped the recordings like a toddlers throwing the toys out of the pram....never mind that some students needed the recordings due to disability access issues or timetable clashes! I have a 5 year old sister who doesn't throw little petty stunts like this when she doesn't get her own way, so not sure why this grown woman still does it...

I had to take this to graduate since it was a core course for my degree and I hate every second of it. Forced to memorise old quotes from Socrates and Plato, tons of easily muddled up words to explain types of body language, a really vague assignment where grades seemed to be pulled out of a hat and an exam full of trick questions.

While the lecturer for this course is really interesting and engaging, this course is still the bane of my existence unfortunately. The readings are incredibly dry, the tutes are little more than watching videos of people on Q&A and overanalysing their body language, there are far too many pointless terms and models to memorise and nearly everything I learn in this course will probably never be used again. This is not really the lecturers fault, she does the best she can with some very boring material. I'm glad I took this in my first semester so I can change out of a communication degree before I get in too deep! The course isn't particularly difficult....more painful in how boring it is.

In this day and age, having to print out homework to hand in at Tutes is just silly. We should just get the mark for attending and then get to submit it via turnitin, or alternatively, not be treated like babies and be trusted to keep up. We're adults here, we don't need homework. It was a pain to have to print out 1% tasks every single week.

Semester taken

Semester 1 - 2014

Your program/major

Bachelor of Arts

Is lecture attendance necessary?

No

Is the textbook necessary?

No

Positives

Lectures are recorded & blackboard well maintain.

Textbook not necessary.

Interesting Lecturer who replies to emails quickly.

Negatives

Incredibly boring subject material.

Annoying 1% weekly homework tasks to be printed.

Exam was more difficult than expected. Several 'trick questions' on paper designed to trip people up.

One of the worst courses I've had to take at UQ. Unfortunately, this one is compulsory for BComm students and has to be done before you can do the interesting stuff. This course is nothing more than having to learn fancy Latin/Greek terms to describe people's body language and way of people and the terms are easily mixed up which can trip you up on a multiple choice quiz....and it felt like the course co-ordinator was trying to trip people up because there were several trick questions on the exam which made me pretty annoyed. I'm glad I got my 5 and now never have to look at any of this nonsense again. Tutors were also pretty unhelpful and refused to give you an idea of what you needed to know for the exam....which is supposed to be their job to help you with these things. The people running this course have some entitlement issues and seem to forget they are a boring core course no one actually wants to do, we just want to get it done, do ok and move on to our majors. If I wanted to learn about Socrates, I'd take a history course....

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